Everyone goes through it. You’ve long finished with high school (in fact, your 10-year reunion is right around the corner), perhaps even finished college, you’ve got a steady job and perhaps a steady partner (with some dating experience hopefully under your belt). Then it hits you: you have no clue what you want out of life. Still. The best part of it is that 30 is coming up, and real fast.
Wasn’t this supposed to be something you were worried about back when you were 18? On the verge of graduating high school, picking a major to lead to a career while scared to death about what the future holds? Um, so what happened?!
Welcome to your mid-twenties. I would say, at this point since I’m here, it’s the most confusing time of my life. As in, more so than the awkward confusion of puberty. At least during that time your inexperience, clumsiness and over all sense of self-consciousness is to say at the very least understandable. But now you’re already supposed to know what you want to do with the rest of the 65-70 years left of your life. You’re supposed to have studied up on and finished a career, start thinking about marriage and a family (already?) while being satisfied and set in your ways in a way that a high school graduate or a college freshman isn’t expected to worry about.
One great blogger I follow, Erika from Refreshingly Honest, recently wrote this post about her experiences with her struggles on the mid-twenty life crisis. Talk about being able to relate, huh? I know what it’s like to wonder about your happiness while going through the motions of these experiences. Like needing a job, but wondering if it’s financially stable (or even rewarding) enough for you to make it? How does it compare to the jobs of your friends? Maybe you’ll be happy when you get that job. Then say you do get the job, or one that’s enough for now. What about finding someone? And not just anyone, that one person? How do you know it’s the right person? First you think you’re happy with them, but then say you think you find them, and you’re still not satisfied? Where do you find your happiness?
Now imagine going through that, and all of a sudden, life throws a curve ball at you. A big one. Let’s, for the sake of argument, call it cancer. Now you have to put all of that on hold so you can take an entire year off of what few short years you do have of your mid-twenties to deal with that. Then you’re left with yet another question piled on top of a heap of them that are plaguing you: how do you pick up the pieces from there?
For now I’m left wondering if I’ll even have a chance to pick up where I left off, or if I have to completely start all over again when this is all over with.
Heather Leigh
